Useless Bay by M. J. Beaufrand
For Juancho,
as always
one
PIXIE
Our dog learned obedience from a murdered man.
Before he was murdered, of course. I suppose it could’ve been after, which would explain why the training didn’t take. Crystal ball, dark room, round table, woman with a turban . . . Hal Liston, if you’re with us, thump twice if you think Patience is a bad, bad dog.
But the facts are weird enough without dragging mediums into it. As it happened, he taught her while he was still breathing.
Hal Liston was a dog whisperer to Seattle stars. He trained the pit bulls of Mariners, the Rottweilers and German shepherds of coffee magnates, and even a Great Dane owned by that retired movie star who always played Reluctant Stoner Hero of the Seventies.
Not that we knew any of this before we sent Patience to Liston Kennels. All we knew was that, on the sly, my brother Sammy had sent $1,600 to a breeder in Alabama and bought a bloodhound, sight unseen. It cleared out his college savings. He was only ten years old at the time (we all were), so you have to give him tactical points for scamming the banks on his own. The idea that he could hide the dog from Mom, who frequently said, “No pets. I have a hard enough time dealing with five children,” was not so smart.
He said he ordered the dog because he had the wacky idea that he wanted to be involved in search-and-rescue, even though he couldn’t ski or rock-climb or operate a helicopter. Kind of a romantic, our Sammy. Not a big thinker-througher.
When the dog arrived in a crate, deposited on our doorstep by the FedEx guy, Mom threw a hissy fit. “Tell me you got this beast from the pound,” she said.
“Yes,” Sammy said. “Yes, I did. I still have a savings account.”
Which, of course, meant he didn’t. The rest of us knew a storm was brewing, so we got the hell out of the house. My other three brothers—Dean and Lawford and Frank—and I hopped on our bikes and pedaled off toward Langley, which was four miles away.
We were halfway there when I considered the quivering ball of fur still cowering in a crate on our front porch.
I said, “What are we going to do about that stupid mutt?”
There were five of us, all born two minutes apart. Even at ten years old, our personalities were set. Dean, the oldest, was our leader. Captain on and off the basketball court. Lawford, the second oldest, was the enforcer. When Dean issued a command, Lawford was at his right shoulder, spoiling for a takedown. He practiced on us all the time. Third in the lineup was Sammy, the prankster and believer in improbable causes like overbred puppies. He was the kid you always see riding his bicycle off the roof into a pile of grass clippings. And when the schemes invariably led to bloodshed and broken bones, Frank, the fourth of us, was always there to sew him up and set him straight. Don’t get me wrong—we were all graduates of Red Cross Senior Lifesaving, but Frank was the one who thought open head wounds were “neat.” He got plenty of practice on Sammy.
I was the youngest. I was just the Girl. My only talent, as far as I knew, was keeping up with my four brothers, and on that particular day, remembering lost causes.
Nobody wanted to think about the dog. Dean and Frank and Lawford didn’t even turn around. None of us wanted to be within miles of a Mom storm. When she was mad, her rage was bigger than a tsunami. All we could do was head for higher ground.
I didn’t want to face her any more than my brothers did, but it didn’t seem fair to abandon Patience just because she was overpriced. So I rode back, ditched my bike out of sight, and sneaked up the front yard so Mom wouldn’t notice me. She had her Rat Pack music cranked up to cover the yelling. But it still didn’t drown out Mom’s voice. I heard “. . . how long it took to save that money on my salary?”
You’ve heard of the Rat Pack. Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. Those guys with slicked-back hair and fedoras who sang, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” They played poker and paraded around with blond bombshells. It was the last part that got me. I didn’t mind so much that Mom named my brothers after the Rat Pack, but she named me after the biggest blond bombshell of them all. Marilyn Monroe Gray. Which was why it was easier, at six foot two, for me to live down the nickname Pixie.
Quietly as I could, I unlatched the crate and waited for the dog to crawl out. Which she did. Slowly.
And oh, that little round puppy belly. A belly that was attached to an actual dog, whose ears were so low she kept tripping over them. She shivered. She howled. She begged to be picked up. She begged to be put down. She begged for a drink of water. She begged for the granola bar in my back pocket.